ILLUSTRATION BY YANN KEBBI“This is the story of how kings are made,” a jaded journalist
proclaims at the start of Junk, the latest play from Pulitzer Prize
winner Ayad Akhtar. “Or what passes for kings these days.”
Financiers who lived through the dizzy 1980s will remem-
ber the era of Wall Street royalty, when a new guard of deal-
makers began to see debt differently, as a thing of value. As
investors chased yield, they embraced risk with zeal—and the
most voracious among them were rewarded with mountains of
cash. In Akhtar’s cautionary study of the period, in previews at
New York’s Lincoln Center Theater, an older financier can’t get
his head around the core of what came to be called “creative
financing.” “Debt is not an asset,” he declares. “Debt is debt!”
We meet Akhtar’s protagonist, Robert “Bob” Merkin
(Steven Pasquale), after his coronation. The cover of Time
magazine labels him “America’s alchemist,” a man who forgesmulti million-dollar deals out of debt and equity. He’s driven
by avarice but also titillated by risk, insulated by a sense of
invincibility. Merkin sees himself as a modern-day J.P. Morgan.
“We’re going to change history,” he confides to a colleague.
“We’re going to change the world.”
We have certainly learned the lessons that came with these
changes, more than once now. But the subject matter seems
especially relevant today, as we reckon with the consequences
of this kind of dealmaking. Akhtar himself was a student of the
junk bond boom. When he moved to New York in 1995, his dad
offered to pay his rent if he agreed to read the Wall Street Journal
every day. “I started to observe how all this stuff was transform-
ing our lives,” Akhtar says after a recent performance. “Or at
least I believed it was.”
In Junk, Merkin’s unsuspecting takeover target is Everson
Steel in Allegheny, Pa., thousands of miles and a world away
from West Los Angeles, where Merkin is based. Here, the con-
flict crystallizes. Thomas Everson Jr. (Rick Holmes), presiding
over a small empire of mills and smelters, feels responsible for
his thousands of employees. When an outside investor amasses
a sizable position in Everson Steel, he sees barbarians at the
gate. The company has been struggling, but Everson hasn’t
been looking for a lifeline.
Performing sorcery depends on secrecy and subterfuge. The
artist knows that if a viewer fully understands what happens
behind the scenes, magic becomes, well, less magical. Financial
wizardry has some of the same mystique, which makes the
playwright’s job difficult: How do you make a complex finan-
cial transaction comprehensible—and, better still, compelling—
to theatergoers?
“It is incumbent on me, as a writer, to provide enough
information for the audience, through action and context and
dialogue, to understand at least what the basic concept is,”
Akhtar says. The play isn’t overly didactic, though. You don’t
have to understand all the jargon to grasp the implications
of what happens. That said, viewers familiar with the ways
of Wall Street will be grateful to Akhtar for doing his due dil-
igence. Two of his closest friends are in finance, and one of
them edited an early draft.
“Finding a way to write about business, where the human
stakes do have consequence, is really the challenge,” Akhtar
says. “Getting a deal done is about getting a deal done, but it
is not always about whether someone is going to live or die.”
It helps that so much in the show—and the plight of Everson
and his employees—feels familiar and real. The financiers, inves-
tors, reporters, and lawyers in Junk are Akhtar’s own creations,
but he acknowledges that Bob Merkin’s resemblance to Michael
Milken extends beyond their near-rhymed surnames. And Akhtar
suspects there will be ticket holders who are acquaintances of
some of the men who inspired his characters. But, he cautions,
“there isn’t a consistent line to be drawn” between Merkin and
Milken. His advice? See Merkin as a metaphor.
Junk focuses on a pivotal moment in American history, when
the country’s value system started to shift, along with the defi-
nition of “success.” Three decades later, it’s worth reflecting
on what changed and what’s happened. At one point, Merkin
and his colleagues raise the specter of “Dow 20,000.” I heard
laughter in the audience as the characters debated its inevita-
bility. The Dow Jones industrial average crossed that threshold
earlier this year, and in October, the index set a new high. Tragedy of
A Bond King
A Broadway show about the dark side of the
financial wizards of the 1980s. By David GuraCRITIC Bloomberg Pursuits October 30, 2017